The media carried some reports about Russian interference in the past week.
One said that the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee (or the full House; I can't remember) was briefed by Intelligence officers that Russian agents—on whom the Intelligence people are spying, presumably—have been conspiring to assist Mr. Trump’s re-election campaign. Another said that Bernie Sanders has reported that his campaign was contacted by the Russians about receiving help—or they were told by US Intelligence that Russians were interested in helping their campaign.
What we’re to make of this: Most experienced Russia observers—and the past four years have given these folks a lot of experience—know that, or guess that, it is more beneficial to Vladimir Putin to have American at loggerheads with each other than it is that a particular candidate on either side should win the nomination of his or her party. In other words, they don’t care which candidate runs for election as much as that the nominee should get his party riled up.
Well, we all suspect that the Russians were fooling with the elections in 2016; they tried to hack into the Clintons’ personal mail server. They tried (and maybe succeeded) in hacking into the mail server of the Democratic National Committee. They seem to have hacked into the server of Wikileaks. They have been sending the information that they have stolen to whoever would get people most upset, rather than a particular person who would win the election.
What both Trump and Sanders should have done, and certainly told the Press, is: “No, I’m not interested; we would very much like to win this election based on the votes, thanks. We’re not banking on voter anger to win; we’re more interested in voters choosing us because of our policy choices, and our values.”
Mr. Trump thought immediately (or at least claimed to have thought) that this was a disinformation campaign dreamed up by the Democrats. He said at a campaign rally that it wasn’t him, Trump, that the Russians wanted to help, it was the Democrats. Bernie Sanders said something similar (about Trump).
This is disappointing. But unfortunately, both Mr. Trump and Mr. Sanders are working themselves up into full battle mode, and neither of them are interested in thinking just how much this public animosity between the various political interest groups is hurting the country. The media (except for possibly NPR) is also interested in a good old drawn-out battle; there’s nothing that sells TV time as much as a good fight. The prices of advertising has probably risen. (We don’t watch the news; if you notice that Lawyers, Drugs and Automobiles have cornered the advertising slots during news segments, you have to suspect that they all favor the country going completely crazy during this election season. These are the biggest advertising spenders. If a law were passed not allowing advertising by law firms and pharmaceutical companies, they would scream at the tops of their lungs.)
Now, I really like Bernie Sanders, and I would not be disappointed if he won the nomination. But he is instinctively mobilizing the anger of regular people, and the poor, who daily have to fight for survival*, versus the very wealthy, who flaunt their ill-gotten gains everywhere we go. So even if his appeal is not anti-Trump hate, it may as well be.
The GOP, meanwhile, has, for a long time, supported Democrat-baiting. They push a lot of actions, some of which benefit only a very narrow sector of society, for instance very large businesses, saying that it would really, really piss off the Democrats! The Alt-Right folks cheer like mad, because it was, in 2017, and probably even today, a bigger deal to piss off the Democrats than it is to improve the lives of ordinary people, including low-income Republicans. So hate is something the Alt-Right sort of enjoys. Unfortunately, hate is something the Alt-Left also enjoys!
And, very possibly, all this delightful hate has been at least partially fostered by the Russians, and possibly others. It weakens the USA as a nation, which makes it possible to take advantage of the USA economically.
Perhaps it is not a bad thing if foreign nations were to take advantage of the USA in some ways. The poorest of the poor nations, such as those in Central America, depended in the past on charitable aid from the US, but over the years Congress has taken away this aid, and only narrowly funneled it into the coffers of dictators who were friendly to us. The Dictators, unfortunately, eventually got on our wrong side (after having happily accepted our contributions for a few years), and then there is often a fiasco. Sometimes we continue to help, sometimes we help their opponents, and whatever we do in times like that is counterproductive; it helps neither the dictator, nor the country. But I am not an expert; foreign aid is a very difficult thing to carry out.
There is no longer any point to watching the Democrat candidates accusing each other at public debates. The fewer debates there are, the better; I want to take away every opportunities for the candidates to make rhetorical faux pas, because some of the candidates who misspeak at the debates might very well be the best choice for a President.
Another interesting point a commentator brought up—I think it was Harry Reid, the former Democrat senator from Nevada, and the leader of the Democrats in the Senate—that he was not concerned about Medicare For All. It would never happen, he said, until everyone was comfortable with it, and certainly not without the support of Congress. Congress, of course, is not likely to rush into Medicare For All (MFA); it is supported by a large Democrat minority, but there’s not enough support to make it law anytime soon. But if there is at least one plan offered by the government, it seems very likely that all plans will have to quickly become better, in response. But again, I’m no expert; US Insurance companies are very tricky. Harry Reid's exact quote was to the effect that a radical running for election becomes a moderate once he or she is in office.
What to do about the Russians? We have to be much more intelligent about political information on our social media platforms. For instance, I have a friend whose posts on my wall are always the most vicious attacks on the President. Sometimes they are factual; sometimes they are parodies; sometimes they are hypothetical: this is what he is likely to do in these circumstances, and what follows is a humorous take on the situation. I have blocked her for about a year. Now my facebook feed is a lot calmer. I have a Twitter account, which I never check. These sorts of strategies are very helpful in avoiding the Democrat-baiting that comes from either the Alt-Right, or the Russians. Of course, this forces us more into our bubbles. But at least it prevents us from snapping at our conservative friends, whom we cannot avoid!
What to do about Me Too? What to do about Stop and Frisk?
The battle of the genders is a difficult thing to deal with. As a male, all I can do is to be more respectful of women, and realize that guys were not this well-behaved in the past.
A woman has a more difficult job dealing with harassment she encounters daily, and harassment she encountered in the past. Each incident has to be handled differently, and no male can advise a woman about what to do. One thing you have to take into account is that you have to judge people by their lights. This means that you can’t reasonably burn Julius Caesar’s diaries just because he groped teenagers in his youth.
Young men, for the last several decades, have often been involved in petty crime, and gone on to violent crime, often involving firearms. In bad times, law enforcement, and people in charge, such as mayors and police superintendents, get sick and tired of dealing with violent crime one incident at a time, and in desperation decide to deal with it statistically; that is, they take some dramatic action to deal with a lot of the crime once and for all. Stop and Frisk, we can see from hindsight, was the beginning of what we know today as profiling, where people who look like they’re a bad lot, get treated as if they were a bad lot.
In the case of Michael Bloomberg, we have to admit that it was a major administrative error, and, honestly, we can expect him to make similar errors if he becomes President. Trump makes these errors several times a day, and even if Bloomberg only makes one a month, that’s too many. However, we have to judge Bloomberg by the lights of the time he was in office. The immediate post-9/11 atmosphere in NYC may have been conducive to taking extreme measures. Bloomberg is still culpable, but perhaps not as culpable as the News Media makes it sound.
Anyway, watch the debate if you must. If you don’t know these people by now, you will never get to know them. Realize that what you want to find out is whether their values come close to your own. Don’t panic about Medicare For All; once they’re in office, they will be a lot more moderate than they appear on the debate stage. Also, make allowances for the septuagenarians on stage; when you’re seventy-something, it’s hard to make a snappy comeback to any challenge. You think of possible ripostes only when you’re sipping that post-debate Geritol cocktail!
Arch——————
*Personally, my wife and I cannot claim to be among the poor; we are semi-retired, and live in a working-class neighborhood in Williamsport, and do very well. We own two cars, and a pick-up which hasn't passed inspection.
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